U.S. Embassy Aide Held as Possible Spy for KGB

A press officer at an American Embassy branch office here has been detained on suspicion of having worked for 13 years as a Soviet spy, German and U.S. authorities said Wednesday.

A spokesman at the German federal prosecutor’s office said that Stephen Laufer was detained by Berlin police Tuesday after an investigation raised suspicions that he passed information to the Soviet KGB from 1977 until early last year, a few months after the Berlin Wall collapsed.

“Yesterday morning, the United States Embassy office in Berlin was notified by the German authorities that during a criminal investigation, Stephen Laufer was detained,” said embassy branch office spokesman and Laufer’s boss, Anthony Seriti. “Mr. Laufer worked for the mission and the embassy since January, 1988. Until legal clarification of the case, there will be no further comment.”

Neither German nor U.S. officials offered details of the evidence against Laufer. A Berlin judge reportedly ruled him eligible for bail, but police late Wednesday were unable to confirm whether he had been released.

In German espionage cases, suspects are usually taken before a special federal court in Karlsruhe, which decides whether evidence warrants the filing of formal charges.

A South African-born, naturalized German citizen, Laufer worked as the deputy press officer at the U.S. Consulate in West Berlin from early 1988 until the consulate’s press function was changed after German unification last October. Then, he was assigned to the same job at the embassy’s branch office in East Berlin.

His official title, “information specialist,” is said to be a routine U.S. Information Service position, usually filled by local foreign nationals with strong knowledge of their country.

Laufer does not have diplomatic immunity.

Before joining the USIS, Laufer worked as a journalist in West Berlin and, later, for nearly 3 years in the mid-1980s, as a speech writer for former West Berlin Mayor Eberhard Diepgen.

His pleasant manner and intimate knowledge of the local Berlin scene made him a favorite of those American reporters who covered Berlin during its last years as a divided city.

Members of a new Western press corps that has settled into the city in the months after the collapse of the Berlin Wall constantly sought his advice, and he frequently attended parties in which he was the lone U.S. Embassy representative.

Those who worked closely with him expressed disbelief at the allegations against him.

Laufer was detained shortly after returning to Berlin from a Christmas vacation in the United States. He worked Monday but reportedly did not show up at the embassy office Tuesday.